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LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

University  of  California. 

Class 

WESTMINSTER    LECTURES 

Edited  by  Kev.  FEANCIS  AVELING,  D.D. 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  GOD 


BY  THE 

Right  Rev.  Mgr.  CANON  MOYES,  D.D. 


LONDON   AND   EDINBURGH 
SANDS     &     COMPANY 

ST   LOUIS,    MO. 
B.   HERDER,   17   South   Broadway 

1906 


-^—     ^  ^  ^ 


PREFACE 

In  the  list  of  lectures  delivered  at  Westminster 
Cathedral  Hall,  the  first  had  for  its  subject  the 
*'  Proofs  for  the  Existence  of  God." 

To  deal  exhaustively  with  the  proofs  as  a 
whole  would  have  required  not  a  lecture  but  a 
treatise.  What  the  reader  will  find  in  the  pages 
that  follow  is  not  an  attempt  to  treat  the  subject 
fully  or  technically,  but  an  effort  to  indicate  in  a 
broad  and  general  way,  the  lines  on  which  it  is 
thought  that  the  proofs  of  God's  existence  may  be 
conveniently  stated. 

It  is  a  need  of  our  rational  nature  to  interro- 
gate the  things  which  we  see,  and  to  ask  the 
reason  of  their  existence.  And  if  this  is  true 
with  regard  to  any  single  phenomenon,  or  group 
of  phenomena,  it  must  be  emphatically  more  so 
when  we  are  face  to  face  with  the  Universe  as  a 
whole.  Hence  the  great  question  as  to  the 
origin  and  destiny  of  the  Universe — the  whence, 
the   why,    and    the  whither — is    inextinguishable 

3 

1G4917 


4  PREFACE 

in  the  human  mind.  Man  from  the  earliest 
times  when  he  looked  out  with  intelligent  eyes 
upon  the  world,  has  never  ceased  to  ask  it.  In 
the  history  of  human  thought,  especially  in  its 
higher  levels,  as  in  the  Greek  civilisation,  the 
best  and  ablest  intellects  of  the  race  have  been 
turned  towards  its  solution.  The  acquired  results 
of  their  labours  have  been  happily  handed  down 
to  us  in  the  great  schools  of  Scholastic  philosophy, 
in  which  we  have  what  has  been  aptly  described 
as  **the  main  line  of  European  thought."^  On 
the  great  question  just  alluded  to,  there  is  nothing 
in  the  **  by-path "  philosophies  which  is  ever 
likely  to  invalidate  their  conclusions.  The  great 
work  of  St  Thomas  and  the  Schoolmen  was  not 
by  any  process  of  thought-spinning  to  originate 
a  new  philosophy,  but  rather  to  gather  up  into  a 
formulated  system  all  that  was  best  and  soundest 
in  the  Greek  and  Arabian  schools  which  inter- 
preted the  thought  of  the  ancient  civilisations. 
Scholastic  philosophy  is  thus  much  more  a 
channel  than  a  source.  We  esteem  it,  not  merely 
because  it  is  Thomistic  or  Scholastic,  but  because 
the  great  natural  verities  which  it  presents  to  us 
in  terms  of  precision  are  the  common  property  of 

1  Professor  Caldecott  of  King^s  College,  and  H.  R. 
M'Intosh,  M.A.,  Selections  from  the  Literature  of  Theism^ 
p.  ID. 


PREFACE  5 

mankind  from  the  simple  fact  that  they  are  the 
thought-out  conclusions  from  the  common  sense 
of  mankind,  at  work  from  the  beginning  upon 
the  great  problems  of  our  origin  and  destiny. 
We  prize  it,  because  it  comes  as  the  heir  of  the 
ages,  and  represents  the  acquired  results  of  the 
highest  and  clearest  thinking  in  the  life  and 
history  of  the  race.  Metaphysical  research  has 
ever  been  its  chief  and  absorbing  aim,  and  its 
soundness  therein  remains  untouched  by  the  fact 
that  in  the  physical  domain,  in  which  inductions 
upon  ever- widening  areas  of  facts  must  necessarily 
make  their  progressive  report,  many  of  its  con- 
clusions have  been  naturally  long  since  evacuated. 
For  this  reason,  most  of  the  arguments  set  forth 
in  the  following  pages  have  proceeded  sub- 
stantially on  the  traditional  lines  of  the  Scholastic 
philosophy,  and  to  it,  rather  than  to  the  somewhat 
free  and  feeble  handling  of  those  arguments  by 
the  writer,  is  due  whatever  worth  or  cogency  they 
may  be  found  to  possess. 

J.  Moves. 


Note, — The  few  questions  that  were  put  to  the  lecturer 
on  the  occasion  of  the  deUvery  of  the  lecture  at  London, 
Aberdeen,  and  Edinburgh  have  been  dealt  with  in  the  text, 
and  consequently  are  not  included  in  an  appendix. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/existenceofgodOOmoyerich 


THE   EXISTENCE    OF   GOD 

''  I  CANNOT  see  God.  But  I  see  that  He  must 
exist ;  for  if  He  did  not,  I  could  not  see  anything. 
There  would  not  be  anything  for  me  to  see,  and 
I  should  not  be  here  with  eyes  to  see  it."  That 
would  represent  roughly  the  argument  which 
arises  in  the  mind  of  men  as  they  gaze  upon  the 
world  around  them.  It  is  built  upon  a  conviction 
that  the  world  and  men  have  been  made — that 
they  did  not  make  themselves — and  that  they 
have  need  of  a  God  to  have  made  them.  But 
why  should  there  be  any  such  need  ?  Why 
should  the  universe  need  to  have  been  made  at 
all  ?  Might  it  not  have  existed  always  and  from 
ever,  with  man  (or  his  elements  to  be  developed 
later  on)  as  a  part  of  it  ?  Might  it  not  exist  of 
itself  by  its  own  forces  and  laws,  without  need  of 
anything  either  to  create  or  to  sustain  it  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question  is  to  be  found 
in  the  proofs  of  the  existence  of  God  ;  and  a 
statement  of  these,  in  very  rough  outline,  is 
attempted  in  the  following  pages. 

7 


8  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

The  proofs  of  God  s  existence  are  various 
and  manifold.  They  are  differently  appreciated 
by  different  people,  according  to  their  mental 
taste  or  aptitude.  A  proof  which  is  felt  to  be 
all  that  is  clear  and  conclusive  to  some,  may  seem 
to  be  vague  and  unsatisfactory  to  others.  For 
that  reason  it  is  well  to  consider  here  a  number 
of  proofs,  leaving  each  mind  to  assimilate  most 
the  one  which  most  appeals  to  it.  No  doubt, 
the  considerations  which  make  for  the  existence 
of  God  are  innumerable,  but  the  main  proofs  as 
traditionally  handed  down  to  us  by  those  who 
have  thought  much  upon  the  subject  are  com- 
paratively few. 

I. — Argument  from  Motion. 

The  first  is  drawn  from  the  fact  of  Motion. 
Here  we  are  at  once  face  to  face  with  a  fact  of 
cosmic  magnitude.  There  is  nothing  which 
enters  so  much  into  the  whole  structure  of  the 
universe  and  is  found  so  much  everywhere  and 
in  everything,  as  Motion.  On  this  point  Science 
bears  eloquent  witness.  Nature  is  truly  de- 
scribed as  an  inexhaustible  storehouse  of 
wonders.  Science — which  is  but  another  word 
for  man  discovering  the  laws  and  secrets  of 
Nature — stands  with    the  telescope  in  one  hand 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  9 

and  the  microscope  in  the  other.  The  one 
turned  upwards  to  scan  the  immeasurably  great, 
reveals  to  us  worlds  upon  worlds  executing  their 
marvellous  dance  in  the  realms  of  boundless 
space,  and  moving  with  unthinkable  speed  along 
paths  so  vast  that  their  distance  can  only  be 
counted  by  the  years  which  a  ray  of  their  light 
would  take  to  reach  us.  The  other  turned 
downwards  to  scrutinise  the  immeasurably  small, 
reveals  worlds  within  worlds  of  organic  structures 
living  and  moving  within  a  compass  so  small  that 
thousands  of  them  might  be  lost  within  the  area 
of  a  pin-head.  But  all  of  them,  great  and  small, 
from  the  remotest  star  to  the  tiniest  microbe,  are 
in  motion,  and  fulfilling  their  part  in  the  universal 
law  of  movement.  Or,  to  look  at  the  same  truth 
from  another  point  of  view,  motion  is  of  all  things 
in  Nature  the  one  which  is  most  tellingly 
brought  home  to  our  senses.     For  in-  ^^!f??^^ 

^  ^  of  Motion 

stance,  I  raise  my  eyes  to  the  sun 
shining  at  noonday,  and  my  sight  is  filled  and 
flooded  with  the  dazzling  brilliance  of  the  sun- 
light. Have  I  seen  it  ?  Nothing  so  clearly. 
Science  tells  me  that  the  light  which  I  have 
seen  is  motion.  I  take  my  stand  at  the  side 
of  a  mighty  piece  of  ordnance — the  100- ton  gun 
— while  the  shot  is  being  fired,  and  my  ears 
are,  as  it  were,  riven  with  the  deafening  report 


lO  THE   EXISTENCE    OF   GOD 

which  seemed  to  rip  and  rend  the  very  atmos- 
phere. Have  I  heard  it  ?  Nothing  so  plainly. 
Science  tells  me  that  the  sound  which  I  have 
heard  is  motion.  I  draw  near  to  a  heated  fur- 
nace, and  I  put  my  hand  into  the  flame  until 
the  pain  is  maddening.  Have  I  felt  it  ?  Nothing 
so  keenly.  Science  tells  me  that  the  heat  which 
I  felt  is  motion.  Light,  heat,  sound,  are  but 
terms  of  motion,  and  these  are  the  most  palpably 
evident  things  in  Nature. 

So  far,  we  are  still  in  the  outer  and  lower 
court  of  the  world's  wonders.  The  crowning 
phenomenon  of  the  whole  universe  is  Thought  in 
the  mind  of  man.  As  a  marvel  and  mystery  of 
power,  both  in  the  inscrutable  subtlety  of  its  process 
and  in  the  far-reaching  sweep  of  its  operation 
and  results,  there  is  nothing  in  all  the  rest  of  the 
universe  which  can  be  compared  to  it.  The 
wonders  of  the  world  outside  of  us  are  not  nearly 
so  great  as  the  wonder  which  is  inside  of  us. 
The  works  of  Nature  in  the  stars  above  us,  and 
in  the  earth  beneath  us,  and  in  the  air  around  us, 
are  immeasurably  surpassed  and  transcended  by 
the  work  which  is  wrought  within  the  mind  of 
every  man  whenever  he  uses  his  intelligence  to 
think,  or  to  know,  or  understand.  But  this  use 
of  the  faculty  means  motion — not  indeed  in  the 
sense   of   local    motion,    but    motion   really   and 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  ii 

essentially  in  the  sense  of  the  exercise  of  a  function, 
and  the  movement  of  powers  into  activity.  From 
the  farthest  planet  to  the  inmost  recesses  of  our 
being,  motion  is  everywhere. 

What  has  our  reason  to  say  when  it  reads  the 
open  page  of  Nature,  and  beholds  the  universe 
vibrating  and  pulsating  from  end  to  end  and 
from  age  to  age  with  this  ubiquitous  law  of 
motion  ? 

It  says  with  all  possible  plainness  that  where 
all  is^in  motion,  there  must  be  a  Prime-mover. 
That  Prime-mover  is  what  we  call  God. 

The  more  we  think  of  it  the  more  we  shall 
realise  the  necessity  of  the  Prime-mover.  And 
the  more  we  shall  feel  that  the  absence  of  one  is 
unthinkable.^ 

We  can  see  that  motion  by  its  very  essence 

must  mean  a  procession  or  transition*     It  is  not 

merely  dynamic.     It  may  be  from  place  to  place, 

or   it   may   be  from   one   state  or   condition    to 

another.     But  it  is  from  somewhere  to  somewhere, 

or   from    something    to    something.      It    is    this 

which  is  the  very  condition  of  all  progress  and 

evolution.       Nothing    can    ever    move    without 

^  That  the  Prime-mover  must  itself  be  unmoved,  is 
obvious.  If  it  were  moved,  it  would  postulate  another 
being  to  move  it,  and  it  would  not  be  the  Prime-mover. 
An  endless  succession  of  movers  and  moved  is  unthinkable 
as  existing  in  reality. 


12  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

moving  in  some  direction.  We  may  think  of  that 
direction  as  a  line,  or  we  may  think  of  it  as  a 
succession  of  states.  When  we  turn  to  find  its 
beginning,  mentally,  the  line  or  succession  might 
be  extended  indefinitely  backwards.  But  in  the 
real  world  there  is  no  such  thing  as  indefinite  or 
illimitable  extension.     Nothing  can  ever 

Initial  Point  ^^^^P^  ^^^  ^^^  ^^  ^^^  Constitution  ;  and 

in  all      even  as  the  part  has  its  measure,  so  the 

Succession  ^j^qJ^  must  have  its  measure,  however 

or  Series 

great  it  may  be  and  beyond  our  reckon- 
ing. Hence  the  line  must  have  an  initial  point, 
however  far  back  we  must  go  to  find  it.  And 
the  evolution  must  have  a  primary  stage,  how- 
ever remote  in  the  world's  history  that  stage 
may  be.  In  other  words,  there  must  have  been 
a  point  at  which,  or  a  source  from  which,  the 
world-motion  was  started,  and  there  must  there- 
fore have  been  a  Prime-mover  to  impart  the 
movement  and  to  conduct  its  evolution. 

This  power  which  is  behind  all  nature  is  God. 
As  Prime-mover,  He  is  the  source  by  which  all 
the  manifold  movement  of  nature  is  fed  and 
sustained — and,  as  the  Unmoved,  He  is  the 
Constant  which  gives  reason  to  all  change,  and 
the  Eternal  which  gives  reason  to  all  time  and 
succession.  It  is  in  Him  that  *'we  live,  and 
move,  and  have  our  being." 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD  13 

1 1 .  — A  rgument  from  Causality, 

A   second   proof  is  found   in    the   nature  of 
Causation. 

In  the  universe  we  have  a  vast  multitude  of 
phenomena.  It  is  quite  clear  that  these  are  not 
isolated  from,  or  independent  of,  one  another.  On 
the  contrary,  they  are  so  connected  that  one 
brings  about  another,  or  makes  it  to  be.  This 
connection  is  called  causation,  and  the  thing 
which  makes  something  else  to  be  is  called  a 
cause,  and  the  thing  which  is  made  to  be  is  called 
an  effect.  If  we  ask  why  should  things 
be  thus  connected,  the  answer  is  that  Nature  the 
they  are  so  because  there  exists  an  Basis  of 
underlying  unity  in  the  phenomena.  ^"^  ^^ 
Just  as  in  mathematics  or  geometry,  the  ex- 
planation why  one  truth  should  be  the  reason 
of  another  truth  is  to  be  found  in  the  intrinsic 
unity  of  all  truth,  so  the  explanation  why  one 
thing  in  this  world  should  cause  another  to  be,  is 
a  certain  unity  which  binds  together  all  nature. 
Effects  flow  from  causes,  and  conclusions  flow 
from  principles  or  premisses,  because  each  has 
unity  as  a  basis  to  go  upon.  We  may  also  note 
that  there  is  not  only  unity,  but — as  we  have 
seen  in  the  motion  proof — there  is  direction. 
Effects  are  found  to  proceed  from  causes,  or  con- 


14  THE   EXISTENCE    OF   GOD 

elusions  from  premisses,  but  not  inversely  ;  the 
causes  do  not  come  out  of  the  effects,  nor  do  the 
premisses  come  out  of  the  conclusion.  That 
means  that  in  the  unity  there  is  order  or  proces- 
sion, whether  in  things  logical  or  ontological. 
Moreover,  this  order  or  procession  is  real ; 
that  is  to  say,  it  is  due  not  merely  to  our  minds 
or  to  any  mental  categories,  but  it  exists  in  the 
nature  of  truth,  and  is  the  nature  of  the  universe. 
A  given  degree  of  heat  causes  a  rock  to  melt. 
Here  is  cause  and  effect,  and  with  them  there  is 
also  a  fixed  order  or  direction.  It  is  the  heat 
which  causes  the  melting,  and  not  the  melting 
which  causes  the  heat.  Both  the  connection  and 
the  order  or  direction  are  real.  The  heat  would 
have  melted  the  rocks — in  point  of  fact,  it  did  so 
— even  if  no  man  were  on  the  face  of  the  earth  to 
witness  it,  or  no  human  mind  were  there  to  know 
it.  Hence  the  relation  between  the 
an  heat  and  the  melting  could  not  be 
Inadequate    adequately  expressed  as  mere  sequence. 

Explanation    y^  u  i  <ui,    *. 

For  sequence  would  only  mean  that 
the  one  followed  the  other,  and  one  might  argue 
that  the  following  was  merely  a  matter  of 
then  and  after,  or  a  matter  of  time,  and  conse- 
quently something  subjective  or  depending  on  the 
standpoint  of  the  observer.  The  relation,  based 
as  it  is  on  the  real  unity  of  nature,  is  obviously 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD  15 

real ;  and  the  one  really  and  naturally  not  only 
precedes  the  other,  but  brings  about  the  other, 
and  would  do  so  if  no  human  mind  had  ever 
existed.  We  may  see  this  more  clearly  in  a  rather 
crude  example.  An  express  train  has  passed  me 
at  full  speed,  and  I  ask  myself  why  do  the 
carriages  move  along  the  line.  Evidently  the 
movement  of  the  carriages  is  due  to  the  movement 
of  the  locomotive,  which  in  turn  is  due  to  the 
pressure  of  the  steam,  and  so  on,  till  we  might 
pass  along  a  line  of  ulterior  causes.  But  if  any- 
one told  me  that  the  explanation  was  to  be  found 
in  sequence,  it  is  clear  that  his  explanation  would 
not  explain.  For  sequence  means  **  following  "  ; 
and  to  tell  me  that  the  carriages  moved  along  the 
line  because  they  followed  the  engine,  or  because 
the  moving  of  the  engine  first  takes  place,  and 
the  movement  of  the  carriages  afterwards,  is  to 
tell  me  nothing,  seeing  that  it  is  why  they  move 
or  followed  the  engine  is  just  what  I  want  to  know. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  my  attention  is  drawn  to 
the  couplings,  and  I  am  shown  that  the  cohesion 
is  such  that  the  movement  of  the  engine  causes  a 
conveyance  of  energy  and  the  movement  of 
the  carriages,  I  am  at  once  put  upon  the  true 
line  of  the  solution.  But  the  couplings  and 
cohesion  are  real,  and  not  subjective,  and  the 
relation  between  the  movement  of  the  engine  and 


i6  THE    EXISTENCE   OF   GOD 

that  of  the  carriages  is  effective  ;  or  in  other  words 
it  is  not  mere  sequence,  but  causation  based  upoi 
an  actual  transference  of  energy  or  force. 

It  is  exactly  this  real  connection  of  phenomen^ 
which  forms  the  foundation  of  all  scientific  kno\ 
ledge  and  achievement.  True  Science  is  essentiallj| 
the  knowledge  of  things  through  their  causes 
Any  one  standing  by  a  water-mill  may  observ^ 
the  fact  that  the  wheel  turns  round,  and  the  fac 
that  the  water  falls  upon  the  wheel,  and  the  fac 
that  the  water  flows  through  the  mill-race.  Eves 
a  brute  might  see  or  observe  such  facts.  But  the 
man,  and  especially  the  man  of  science,  by  the 
law  of  his  reason  goes  farther,  and  asks  the  reason 
why.  He  sees  the  cause  of  the  rotation  of  the 
wheel  in  the  weight-pressure  of  the  flowing  and 
falling  water,  and  the  cause  of  the  flow  and  fall  of 
the  water  in  the  law  of  gravity,  and  its  liquid 
nature,  and  he  will  pursue  his  research  of  causes 
if  need  be  into  its  chemical  composition.  But 
throughout  he  is  building  on  the  principle  of 
causation  and  the  real  connection  of  cause  and 
effect,  and  every  induction  which  he  makes  from 
his  observed  facts  assumes  the  unity  or  uni- 
^.     ..       formity  of  nature   by  which  the  same 

Direction  ^  ^  ^ 

as  well  as    causes  in  the  same  circumstances  will 

^^^      produce   the    same    effects.     We    may 

note  that  the  mere  unity  of  nature  in  itself  is  not 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD  17 

enough  for  his  purpose.  He  must  count  upon  a 
certain  fixed  order  or  direction  existing  in  the 
phenomena,  by  which  some  produce  others  and 
are  not  produced  by  them.  Without  this  prin- 
ciple of  real  connection  and  direction  which  we 
call  causation,  the  whole  work  of  science  would 
come  to  a  standstill,  and  all  its  achievements  in 
the  past  would  be  reduced  to  guess-work.  If 
causation  be  the  explanatory  principle  of  Nature, 
it  must  also  be  the  effective  principle  of  Nature ; 
for  the  way  in  which  things  are  known  must  ever 
at  root  be  the  way  in  which  things  themselves  are 
made  or  done.  The  mind  understands  a  thing  in 
its  cause  because  in  the  cause  it,  so  to  speak,  wit- 
nesses the  doing  or  the  making  of  it.  The  logical 
and  the  ontological  are  but  two  ways  of  walking 
the  same  road,  although  the  doing  begins  from 
one  end  and  the  knowing  begins  from  the  other, 
as  the  cause  acts  downwards  to  effect,  while  the 
mind  investigates  upwards  from  the  effect  to  the 
cause.  This  very  connection  of  phenomena  which 
we  have  termed  direction — the  procession  of  effect 
from  cause — is  in  itself  a  finger-post  embedded  in 
the  very  nature  of  things,  pointing  back  to  the 
source  from  which  all  things  have  proceeded. 
And  here  we  reach  the  gist  of  our  argument. 

If  the  universe  lies  before  us  as  a  vast  multi- 
tude of  phenomena — if  this  multitude  be  not  a 

B 


i8  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 


I 


chaos,  but  a  world  held  together  by  a  marvellous  _ 
law  of  unity,  and  at  the  same  time  marked  by  a  | 
not  less  marvellous  law  of  direction  or  procession, 
as  seen  in  the  uniform  but  manifold  concatena- 
tion of  causes  and  effects  (the  origin  no  doubt  of 
variety) ; — if  we  have  as  a  result  all  that  splendour 
of  order  which  means  classification  in  place  and 
evolution  in  time,  then  at  the  root  of  all  this  unity 
and  causation  there  must  be  One  Cause,  in  which 
the  unity  finds  its  source,  and  from  which  the 
causation  derives  its  original  impulse  and  energy. 
That  is  only  to  say  that  when  we  have  in  the 
universe  a  vast  chain  of  causes  and  effects,  and 
when  we  travel  up  from  cause  to  cause,  and  then 
again  to  an  ulterior  cause,  the  series  existing  as  it 
does  in  reality  cannot  be  indefinite,  and  we  must 
eventually  reach  the  First  Cause,  which  is  God. 
In  doing  so  our  minds  are  only  logically  or  by 
knowledge  travelling  up  the  chain  by  which  the 
Final  Cause  ontologically  or  by  creation,  so  to 
speak,  worked  down.  However  long  the  chain, 
there  must  be  an  initial  link,  and  above  all  there 
must  be  a  Linker  ;  or  the  chain  had  never  been 
woven,  nor  its  links  put  together  in  the  admirable 
order  in  which  we  find  them. 

We  have  seen  that  the  connection  between 
phenomena  is  effective.  It  is  not  merely  that  one 
succeeds  the  other,  but  the  one  brings  about  the 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  19 

other.  That  means  that  there  must  be  a  trans- 
ference of  energy,  or  a  transformation,  or  at  least 
a  transition  of  energy,  in  the  succession.  Some- 
thing must  pass  from  one  to  another  or  from  one 
in  the  other,  or  there  would  be  no  trans  in  the 
matter.  Hence  causation  is  necessarily  a  giving, 
and  a  cause  is  essentially  a  giver  ;  and  an  effect  is 
what  is,  and  has  what  it  has,  just  because  it  has 
received  it  from  the  cause.  The  molten  rock 
equals  all  that  caused  the  composition  of  the  rock 
plus  the  heat  which  melted  it.  Hence 
the   old  scholastic  axiom,   which   says    9^"^ation 

/IS  giving 

that  there  is  nothing  in  an  effect  which 
first  of  all  did  not  exist  (and  in  a  higher  manner) 
in  its  cause.  That  is  only  another  way  of 
saying  that  no  one  can  give  what  it  has  not. 
If,  then,  the  principle  of  causation  teaches  us 
that  there  is  a  First  Cause  from  which  pro- 
ceeded all  the  effects  which  we  see  in  the  uni- 
verse, and  which  is  simply  a  series  of  givings, 
it  teaches  us  also  that  there  can  be  found  in  the 
universe  nothing  of  being,  viz.,  nothing  real  or 
good,  which  is  not  to  be  found  first  of  all  and 
most  of  all  in  the  First  Cause  from  which  all 
originated.  Hence  if  we  find  here  amongst  us  such 
things  as  goodness,  life,  love,  intelligence,  the 
First  Cause  must  be  one  which  has  all  these 
attributes,  and  in  the  highest  way,  and  is  there- 


20  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

fore  not  only  God,  but  a  good,  living,  loving, 
intelligent,  and  therefore  a  Personal  God.  If  our 
seeing,  hearing,  and  understanding  have  come 
from  Him,  He  must  be  one  who  Himself  can  see, 
hear,  and  understand.^  That  is  an  argument 
which  appealed  to  man  long  before  the  Scholastics. 
*'  He  that  planteth  the  ear,  shall  He  not  hear  ;  and 
He  that  formed  the  eye,  doth  He  not  consider? 
He  that  chastiseth  the  nations,  shall  He  not  rebuke ; 
He  that  teacheth  men  knowledge  ?"  (Ps.  xciii.). 

III.  — A  rgument  from  Necessity. 

Another  proof  is  found  in  the  nature  of  the 
world's  existence.  We  feel  there  is  wide  differ- 
ence between  the  ways  in  which  things  are  felt  to 

1  It  would  be  superficial  to  discount  the  force  of  such  an 
argument  on  the  plea  of  its  being  anthropomorphism.  As 
long  as  being  comes  down  from  cause  to  effect,  it  must  be 
reasonable  and  logical  to  argue  upwards  from  effect  to  cause, 
and  to  attribute  eminentcr  to  the  cause  whatever  there  is  of 
the  nature  of  being  in  the  effect.  That  is  only  to  assert  the 
unity  of  Nature  and  the  necessary  harmony  of  the  logical 
with  the  ontological,  or  knowledge  with  the  nature  of 
things.  There  is  therefore  so  far  a  true  anthropomorphism 
which  attributes  to  God  all,  in  the  highest  way,  which  is 
good  in  man.  Anthropomorphism  becomes  false  only  when 
it  departs  from  this  law,  and  attributes  to  God  not  being,  or 
what  is  good  and  positive,  but  the  limitations,  the  falling 
short,  or  negation  of  being,  which  is  evil  or  imperfection 
as  found  in  man. 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD  21 

be  true.  For  instance,  it  is  true  that  two  and 
two  make  four,  and  that  the  angles  of  a  triangle 
equal  two  right  angles.  These  statements  are  so 
true,  that  we  know  and  feel  that  they  never  could 
have  been  otherwise.     They  are  eter- 

]Nf6C6ssd.rv 

nally  and  immutably  and  universally  ^nd 
true,  and  a  time,  place,  or  condition  in  Contingent 
which  they  would  not  be  true  is  utterly 
unthinkable.  Because  they  are  not  only  true, 
but  must  be  true,  they  are  called  necessary  truths. 
But  there  are  other  statements  which  as  a  matter 
of  fact  are  true,  but  which  we  feel  might  have 
happened  to  be  otherwise.  For  instance,  it  is 
true  that  you  are  reading  this  page  at  the  present 
moment ;  but  it  might  have  easily  happened  that 
this  page  had  never  been  written,  or  that  you  had 
never  consented  to  read  it.  It  is  true  that  London 
is  built  on  the  Thames  ;  but  it  is  true  not  neces- 
sarily, but  just  because,  as  a  fact,  it  happens  to  be 
so  ;  because  London  might  have  been  built  else- 
where, or  might  never  have  been  built  at  all. 
When  things  are  true,  not  because  they  must  be 
so,  and  cannot  be  otherwise,  but  because  as  a 
matter  of  fact  they  happen  to  be  true,  they  are 
called  happenings,  or  contingent  truths.  The 
distinction  is  a  very  plain  one,  and  one  which 
cornes  home  to  the  common  sense  of  every  reason- 
ing mind.     We  are  all  familiar  with  it,  when  we 


te  THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD 

draw    the    distinction    between    principles    and 
facts. 

We  apply  it  to  the  world  around  us,  and  ask 
ourselves  to  which  class  of  truths  does  the 
universe  belong?  Clearly,  it  belongs  to  the 
happening  or  contingent  class.  No  one  feels  for 
a  moment  that  the  statement  that  the  universe 
exists,  is  on  a  par  with  the  statement  that  two 
and  two  make  four.  The  first  is  quite  true,  but 
it  might  have  been  otherwise.  The  second  is 
necessary,  and  anything  else  would  be  impossible. 
Or,  if  we  wish  to  push  the  inquiry  farther,  we 
may  once  more  call  to  mind  that  law  by  which 
nothing  can  ever  rise  above  its  own  composition 
and  constitution.  Every  part,  and  every  group 
of  parts  of  the  universe  which  we  see  is  manifestly 
contingent.  There  is  nothing  in  physical  nature 
which  might  not  have  been,  and  the  laws  of 
Nature  although  de  facto  determined,  fixed,  and 
uniform,  are  not  immutable  like  mathematical 
truths,  in  the  sense  that  it  would  be  impos- 
sible or  unthinkable  that  they  should  ever  have 
been  otherwise.  If  the  parts  of  the  universe  be 
thus  contingent,  it  is  clear  that  the  whole  must  be 
likewise  contingent,  for  there  can  be  nothing  in  a 
whole  which  is  not  derived  from  the  parts  which 
constitute  it.  But  once  we  know  that  the 
universe  is  contingent,    we   are   in    face   of  two 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD  23 

alternatives.  Either  the  universe  was  made  by 
someone — or,  the  universe  always  existed  of 
itself.  Now  if  we  examine  the  second,  we  find 
that  it  will  not  hold  good.  That  a  necessary 
being  should  exist  of  itself  and  from  all  time,  is 
intelligible.  But  that  a  contingent  being — as 
we  have  seen  the  universe  must  be — should  so 
exist,  is  incredible.  In  the  first  place,  a  being 
which  existed  of  itself  could  not  help  itself  from 
existing  (since,  to  prevent  itself  from  existing,  it 
would  have  to  exist  before  it  existed — which 
would  be  absurd).  If  it  cannot  help  itself  from 
existing,  and  there  is  nothing  else  to  help  it, 
it  would  be  a  necessary  being,  and  not  a  con- 
tingent being,  for  its  non-existence  would  be  an 
impossibility.  In  the  second  place,  if  a  universe 
existed  from  all  time,  and  were  still  contingent, 
we  should  have  to  believe  that  its  existence  was 
really  nothing  more  than  a  mere  happening  or 
accident.  In  that  case  we  should  either  have  to 
seek  something  outside^  of  the  universe,  which 
determined  the  happening  in  favour  of  existence 
rather  than  the  reverse,  or  we  should  have  to 
leave  the  happening  without  any  determining 
cause  at  all,  either  in  itself  or  elsewhere.  But 
that  would  be  literally  to  ascribe  the  existence  of 

^  If  its  existence  were  determined  from  within,  it  would 
be  self-existent  and  necessary. 


24  THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD 

the  whole  universe  to  chance.  Such  a  conclusion 
,  would  be  all  that  is  unreasonable  and  unscientific. 
Reason  asks  the  why  of  all  existence,  and 
tells  us  that  the  determinant  of  existence  must 
be  either  inside  the  being  which  exists — in  which 
case  it  is  self-existent  and  necessary,  and  not 
contingent — or  it  is  outside  of  it,  in  which  case 
it  is  contingent  and  not  self-existent  or  necessary. 
But  to  believe  in  existence  without  a  determi- 
nant either  within  or  without  would  be  to  refer  the 
maximum  of  being  to  no  reason  whatever,  and 
to  land  ourselves  in  the  lowest  depth  of  supersti- 
tion ;  for  superstition  exactly  consists  in  ascribing 
effects  to  non-existent  causes  ;  and  the  greater  the 
effect  so  ascribed,  the  greater  the  superstition. 
True  Science  asks  the  causes  of  things,  and  takes 
as  its  ruling  principle  that  nothing  happens  by 
chance.  If  it  be  unscientific  to  refer  even  the 
least  part  of  the  universe  to  chance,  how  much 
more  unscientific  would  it  be  to  refer  the  whole  ? 

Throughout  this  argument  we  have  been 
relying  upon  a  fact  of  rational  experience,  namely, 
the  distinct  apprehension  of  necessary  as  con- 
trasted with  contingent  truth.  The  verdict  of 
our  reason  is  that  the  one  is  not  the  other,  and 
that  the  one  must  be,  and  cannot  but  be,  while 
the  other  only  is  or  may  be,  and  might  not  be. 
There   is    the   whole  class  of  mathematical  and 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD  25 

geometrical  truths  belonging  to  the  one  and  the 

whole   class    of    physical   and   historical    truths 

belonging  to  the  other.     If  the  distinction  could 

be  shown  not   to  exist  in  the  nature   of  things 

(based   on   the   root-difference    between    identity 

of  being   and  mere  fact,  viz.,   between    essence 

and  action),   but  to  be  due  merely  to    ^ 

^  '  Causation 

mental   category,  or   a   groove   of  the       not  a 

mind    which    apprehends,    and    not    to      Cental 

Category 
anything   in   the    truths   apprehended, 

the  argument  would  indeed  be  subverted.  But 
in  that  case  we  should  have  to  face  the  conse- 
quences. One  of  the  plainest  facts  of  mental 
experience — the  sense  of  a  necessary  truth  as 
different  from  a  contingent  one — would  have 
been  proved  to  be  illusory  and  misleading.  Our 
reason,  in  telling  us  that  a  whole  set  of  truths  is 
of  a  kind  which  must  be,  would  have  utterly 
deceived  us,  and  in  telling  us  that  their  contra- 
dictories were  impossible,  would  have  equally 
misled  us.  Our  perception  of  the  principle  of 
identity  would  have  been  a  mental  illusion.  If 
this  were  the  case,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  we 
could  ever  afterwards  trust  to  the  report  of 
experience  or  to  the  dictate  of  reason.  All 
physical  science  is  built  on  experience,  and  all 
mathematical  science  on  reason,  and  precisely  on 
reason  perceiving  this  very  principle  of  identity. 


26  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

If,  then,  the  distinction  which  is  the  foundation 
of  the  argument  were  impugned,  we  could  only 
feel  that  all  modern  science  was  based  upon 
false  and  unreliable  foundations.^ 

I  may  sum  up  the  statement  of  this  argu- 
ment by  saying  that  our  reason,  by  refusing  to 
confuse  the  things  which  it  feels  must  be  with 
those  which  are  but  might  not  be,  has  a  sense  of 
necessity.  It  thus  enables  us  by  demarcation  to 
perceive  the  quality  of  contingency,  or  non-aseity 
— in  other  words,  of  createdness — which  attaches 
to  the  universe,  whether  in  its  constituent  parts 
or  in  its  constituted  whole.  As  such  a  universe 
must  have  for  its  existence  a  determinant  which 

^  We  cannot  explain  away  the  sense  of  necessary  truth 
by  holding  the  theory  that  it  is  merely  due  to  an  inherited 
tendency  to  conclude  that  what  we  have  always  seen  to  be 
must  always  have  been  ; — in  other  words,  that  our  remote 
ancestors  found  by  experience,  so  much  and  so  often,  that 
two  and  two  made  four,  that  their  descendants  gradually 
lost  the  power  of  perceiving  that  it  could  be  otherwise, 
and  thus  acquired  an  inherited  sense  of  necessity.  Man 
from  the  beginning  has  been  face  to  face  to  nature,  and  with 
a  multitude  of  physical  facts  which  have  entered  quite  as 
constantly  into  his  experience.  He  saw  the  grass  grow, 
and  the  rivers  flow,  and  the  sun  rise  and  set  morning  and 
evening,  and  presumably  before  he  had  learned  to  count 
that  two  and  two  made  four.  Yet,  after  thousands  of 
years  in  perceiving  these  physical  facts,  we  are  not  conscious 
of  any  sense  of  necessity  as  we  undoubtedly  are  in  dealing 
with  necessary  truths. 


THE   EXISTENCE    OF   GOD  27 

is  not  of  itself,  there  must  exist  outside  ^  of  it  a 
Being  self-existent  and  necessary  upon  which  it 
depends.  This  Being  we  call  God,  '*  uphold- 
ing all  things  by  the  word  of  His  power." 
(Heb.  i.  3). 

IV. — Argument  from  Perfection.  ' 

Another  argument  for  the  existence  of  God 
is  based  on  the  varying  degrees  of  perfection  in 
which  things  are  found  to  consist..  The  world 
is  not  only  marvellously  complex,  but  the  things 
in  it  differ  from  one  another  by  being  some  higher 
and  better  than  others.  A  plant  is  higher  than 
a  stone,  a  brute  is  higher  than  a  plant, 
and  man  is  higher  than  the  brute.  Moreover, 
qualities  of  strength,  beauty,  worth,  are  possessed 
by  some  in  a  higher  measure  as  by  others  in  a 

1  We  say  ''  outside  "  of  it  in  the  sense  of  being  immeasur- 
ably distinct  from  it.  The  distance  between  God  and  His 
creation  is  not  spatial  but  ontological.  A  concept  of  God 
in  His  heaven  or  away  above  the  stars,  is  simply  a  very 
natural  way  of  representing  the  transcendentalism  of  the 
Necessary  Being.  It  has  its  due  correction  in  the  doctrine 
of  His  omnipresence.  Some  who  lay  stress  upon  His 
immanence,  represent  Him  as  the  ''groundwork"  upon 
which  all  phenomena  are  projected.  But  obviously  the 
concept  of  God  as  a  groundwork  is,  if  anything,  more  crude 
than  that  of  a  God  beyond  the  stars.  And  a  spatial  God 
would  be  even  more  unthinkable  than  a  sidereal  one, 


28  THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD 

lower,  and  things  present  themselves  in  a  scale 
of  innumerable  degrees  of  perfection.  Thus  all 
over  the  face  of  nature  is  written  conspicuously 
the  distinction  of  higher  and  lower  and  more 
and  less.  But,  as  higher  and  lower  and  more 
or  less  are  plainly  relative,  there  must  in  the 
nature  of  things  be  somewhere  a  standard  in 
relation  to  which  they  become  higher  or  better 
as  they  approximate,  and  lower  or  less  as  they 
become  remote.  For  a  relative  without  an 
absolute  is  unthinkable.  The  standard  might 
indeed  de  facto  be  something  having  the  highest 
degree  of  perfection  actually  acquired.  As  such, 
it  would  be  only  contingently  absolute  ;  but  the 
real  absolute  would  require  to  be  one  outside  of 
which  there  could  be  no  higher  degree  of  perfec- 
tion possible,  otherwise  it  itself  would  be  relative 
and  not  absolute,..  Hence  the  more-or-less-ness 
which  we  see  in  nature  is  in  its  measure  an 
indication  of  the  absolute  perfection  which  is 
but  another  name  for  God,  of  whom  all  relative 
perfection  in  nature  is  but  the  fragmentary  shadow, 
measuring  its  greatness  or  goodness  by  its 
approach  to   Him. 

We  may  here  note  that  certain  writers  of  the 
Positivist  school  have  insisted  very  much  on  the 
relativity  of  all  knowledge.  They  regard  all 
phenomena    as    so    many   symbols   rather    than 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  29 

realities  ;  and  as  the  phenomena  of  the  universe 
are  innumerable  and  complex  beyond  all  calcula- 
tion, they  argue  that  any  conclusions  or  inductions 
founded  upon  any  given  set  falling  under  our 
experience  can  never  possess  any  absolute 
certainty,  and  can  never  be  said  to  be  true  except 
in  a  sense  which  is  not  real  but  merely  relative. 

But  if  the  contention  were  true,  the  real 
sufferers  would  not  be  the  theists,  but  the 
scientists.  It  would  mean  that  the  xheReia- 
whole  work  of  science  was  based  on  tivityof 
unreality ;  that  its  acquired  results  ^^^"^"^^"^ 
were  after  all  not  acquired,  but  liable  to  be 
annulled  at  any  time  by  a  change  of  the  rela- 
tivity ;  and  that  men  of  scientific  research  were 
at  best  playing  a  game  of  counters,  of  which 
they  themselves  cannot  even  know  the  value. 
If  that  were  the  case,  students  of  science  might 
well  have  some  reason  for  discouragement.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  theist  would  feel  that  the 
more  any  one  insisted  that  phenomena  were 
mere  symbols,  and  that  the  whole  universe  was 
a  vast  complexus  of  relativity,  the  more  imperative 
would  be  the  need  of  believing  in  an  ^absolute. 
For  relations  do  not  hang  in  the  air,  and  re- 
lativity without  an  absolute  is  inconceivable. 
The  Absolute,  which  includes  the  reason  of  all 
reality,  would    be    transcendental,    and    nothing 


30  THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD 

else  than  the  God  for  whose  existence  the  theist 
is  contending  ;  and  the  more  a  Positivist  insists 
on  the  relativity  of  knowledge  and  phenomena, 
the  more,  in  fact,  he  is  found  to  insist  on  the 
ultimate  truth  of  God's  existence. 

V. — Argimient  of  Design,  -  A^-^^^^ 

A  well-known  proof  for  the  existence  of  God 
is  found  in/  the  fact  of  all  nature  bearing  the 
impress  of  design,  and  this  proof  when  carefully 
considered  is  felt  to  be  more  profound  than  at 
first  sight  it  might  seem  to  be. 

It  is  undeniable  that  in  nature  we  find  the 
twofold  feature  —  symmetry  and  construction. 
In  plants  and  in  crystals  are  to  be  found 
geometrical  forms  of  marvellous  symmetry. 
But  much  more  wonderful  is  the  fact  that  in 
nature  there  is  not  only  structure,  but  construc- 
tion, viz.,  the  adjustment  of  part  to  part  with  a 
view  to  the  fulfilling  of  a  given  purpose.  No 
machine  which  has  issued  from  the  inventive 
genius  of  man — the  printing-press,  the  telegraph, 
the  phonograph  —  can  compare  in  mechanical 
adaptation  to  the  solar  system,  or  the  organism 
of  a  plant  or  an  insect.  Man's  machines  are 
cumbrous  at  the  best,  as  they  are  fitted  together 
from    the   outside.      Nature's  machines   are   ex- 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  31 

quisite,  because  they  are  fitted  together  from  the 
inside  and  by  the  forces  which  permeate  them. 
How  far  do  such  facts  as  symmetry  or  adaptation 
of  parts  imply  the  action  of  an  intelligent  cause  ? 
y  The  mere  fact  of  symmetrical  forms  in  nature 
might  be  traced  to  the  uniform  action  of  certain 
forces.  And  even  adaptation  of  part  to  part 
might  within  certain  limits  be  explained 
by  the  tendency  of  matter  to  adapt  Adapution 
itself  to  the  action  of  forces  which 
shape  it  in  the  way  best  suited  to  the  flow 
of  their  energy^.  If  I  see  a  round  stick  fitted 
exactly  into  a'^  round  hole  in  a  hard  substance, 
I  may  say  that  some  intelligent  artisan  must 
have  made  the  one  to  suit  the  other.  But  if 
a  piece  of  wood  were  pressed  by  some  con- 
tinuous force  against  the  round  hole  for  a 
sufficiently  long  time,  the  mere  pressure  would 
make  the  stick  to  fit  the  hole,  and  we  should 
have  a  case,  not  of  design,  but  of  force-adaptation. 
Why  the  matter  of  the  wood  suited  the  shaping 
pressure  of  the  force,  and  why  the  wood  and  the 
force  were  there  at  all,  working  together,  would 
still  remain  to  be  explained.  If  the  result  were 
not  a  mere  round  stick  fitted  to  a  round  hole, 
but  a  wonderful  and  complex  organism  functioning 
by  a  co-ordination  of  manifold  parts  for  a  definite 
purpose,   we  should   feel    that   the  fact   of  mere 


32  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

force-adaptation  would  not  go  very  far  to  account 
for  the  construction.  Force  is  one  thing,  but  the 
purpose  or  purposive  action  which  characterises 
force  is  another.  It  is  the  latter  which  is  so 
plain  in  nature,  and  which  cries  out  for  an 
explanation.  Herein  is  the  ulterior  strength  of 
Example  ^^^  Argument  of  Design.  I  see  a 
of  Design—   heron  wading  in  the  shallows,  fishing 

Arg^ument      f^^  j^.^  p^.^^^     j^^  j  ^^i-^h  it  at  its  WOrk, 

I  may  observe  that  it  presents  all  the  evidences 
of  having  been  designed  by  an  intelligent 
Creator.  There  is  the  long  beak,  so  admirably 
fitted  to  reach  down  far  into  the  water  for  the 
food  ;it  seeks  ;  the  supple  neck,  which  allows  it 
to  deliver  the  stroke  with  unerring  precision ; 
the  long  legs,  enabling  it  to  wade  far  out  into  the 
water  where  its  food  may  be  found.  I  might 
conclude  that  surely  an  intelligent  Creator  had 
given  it  such  a  beak,  neck,  and  legs,  precisely 
with  the  design  that  it  should  be  able  to  live  and 
to  find  its  sustenance.  But  here  I  may  stand 
corrected.  A  naturalist  may  point  out  to  me 
that  the  bird  has  a  history,  and  that  it  was  not 
always  shaped  as  I  now  see  it.  He 
Evolutionist   ^      proceed  to  tell  me  what  he  believes 

Explanation  ^  ^ 

to  be  the  tale  of  its  evolution.  It  was 
once  very  much  like  other  birds.  To  begin  with, 
its  material  organism  was  more  or  less  plastic. 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD  33 

and  likely  to  be  shaped  by  internal  and  external 
conditions.  Then  energy  flows  more  fully  into 
a  member  the  more  it  is  used,  and  the  member 
is  thus  developed  in  size  and  strength.  The 
bird,  obliged  to  use  its  legs  in  walking  and 
wading  after  its  prey,  and  its  beak  in  seizing 
it,  gradually  strengthened  these  members  rather 
than  others.  Moreover,  it  would,  by  the  law 
of  heredity,  transmit  these  characteristics  to  its 
offspring.  The  farther  it  would  have  to  wade 
out  into  the  water  for  a  supply  of  food,  the 
better  chance  its  long  legs  and  strong  beak 
would  give  it  of  finding  what  it  wanted.  Those 
of  its  offspring  which  had  the  longest  legs  and 
strongest  beaks  would  have  more  plentiful  food, 
and  would  be  the  more  likely  to  survive,  to  be 
strong  and  vigorous,  and  to  have  numerous  pro- 
geny. Those  which  had  not  these  advantages 
would  be  handicapped  in  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence, and  would  become  weak,  would  die  out, 
and  fail  to  have  offspring.  Thus  by  the  mere 
self-shaping  process  of  energy  moulding  the 
organism  from  within,  and  environment  mould- 
ing it  from  without,  and  weeding  out  the  unfitted, 
we  may  come  to  have  the  heron  very  much  as 
we  now  find  it.  All  that  is  but  a  very  crude  out- 
line  of  the  working  of  a  theory  with  which  we 
all  are  familiar. 

f  UNIVERSITY   I 

V  OF  >/ 


34  THE    EXISTENCE   OF   GOD 

Let  us,  then,  for  the  moment  accept  the  theory, 
and  examine  the  process.  There  is  at  the  very 
beginning  a  law  of  nutrition  or  self- 
Explanation  preservation,  by  which  the  animal 
Enforces  seeks  to  sustain  the  life  within  it  by 
Argument  ^^^  quest  of  food  which  is  outside  of 
it.  That  is  law  number  one.  Then 
there  is  the  law  of  plasticity  of  organism,  by 
which  its  members  can  be  moulded  more  or  less 
by  inward  forces  or  outward  environment.  That 
is  law  number  two.  There  is  the  law  of  invigora- 
tion,  which  sends  most  of  the  vital  energy  into  a 
member  that  is  most  used,  and  least  into  that 
which  is  least  used,  so  that  the  one  becomes 
strengthened  and  developed,  while  the  other 
becomes  weakened  or  atrophied.  That  is  law 
number  three.  There  is  the  law  of  heredity, 
which  transmits  to  the  offspring  even  in  a 
pronounced  degree  the  character  thus  given  to 
the  organism  of  the  parents.  That  is  law  number 
four.  There  is  the  law  of  survival  of  the  fittest, 
which  enables  those  who  are  adapted  to  the  food- 
finding  and  environment  to  live  and  thrive  and 
multiply,  and  weeds  out  and  cuts  off  the  succes- 
sion of  those  who  are  not.  That  is  law  number 
five.  We  have  thus  five  laws,  each  with  its  own 
specific  drift  and  operation  ;  laws  which  we  may 
roughly     name    food-quest,    member  -  moulding. 


THE    EXISTENCE   OF   GOD  35 

energy-flow,  heredity,  and  elimination  of  the 
weakest.  And  these  five  laws  are  not  at  all 
separate,  isolated,  or  independent.  On  the  contrary, 
they  are  adjusted  so  as  to  fit  into  one  another, 
all  moving  together  by  a  marvellous  interadapta- 
tion  and  interaction  to  achieve  one  definite  pur- 
pose— the  production  of  a  well-developed  heron. 
Now  that  in  itself — this  mechanism  of 

jV/r  Ck  r*  n  3  n  1  ^m 

laws — is  a  combination  far  more  won-      ©f  Parts 
derful,  more  eloquent  in  its  need  of  a         and 
constructive     intelligence,     than     any    ^^^l^^^"* 
machine  which    has  ever  come   under 
our   observation.      If   I    had  under   my  hands  a 
machine  consisting  of  five  main  parts,  which  when 
put    together   worked    harmoniously   to   effect    a 
given  object,   I  might  admire  indeed  the  skill  of 
the  inventor.     But  if   I  have  before  my  eyes  a 
construction   in  which  it   is  no  longer  five  dead 
parts,   but   five  active   laws   of  nature   that  are 
so    deftly    handled,    interwoven,    and    combined, 
that    by    their    interplay    they    are    perpetually 
turning    out   a    multitude  of  living    types,    with 
the    ages    for    their    working-day   and    the   uni- 
verse   for    their    workshop,     I    may    justly    feel 
that  here  indeed  is  Design    in  the  most  telling 
and    sublime    sense    of    the    word.     Any    mere 
adjustment  of  parts  can  never  equal  in  ingenuity 
and    skill  that   adjustment  of  laws    which    must 


36  THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD 

ever  be  a  higher  and  subtler  form  of  mechanism. 
If  an  ordinary  machine  requires  an  intelligent 
constructor  to  adapt  its  parts  and  fit  them 
together,  how  much  more  this  higher  mechanism 
of  laws  cries  out  for  the  need  of  an  intelligent 
Maker  to  set  them  in  motion,  to  combine  their 
action,  to  direct  their  operation  to  the  definite 
purpose  for  which  we  see  them  so  wonderfully 
working.  The  earthly  mechanic  plods  with  his 
material,  which  he  shapes  in  such  a  way  that  the 
laws  of  nature  may  help  him  to  achieve  his  object. 
The  laws  themselves  are  beyond  his  control,  and 
he  can  only  apply  them.  But  the  Mechanic  who 
can  handle  the  laws  themselves  and  fit  them  to 
work  together,  even  as  the  earthly  mechanic  fits 
his  wheels  and  levers,  must  transcend  in  power 
and  intelligence  all  human  genius. 
X  The  argument  of  Design  is  not  impaired,  but 
rather  strengthened  and  enhanced,  by  all  that  the 
naturalist  can  tell  us  of  evolution.  It  means  that 
the  universe  is  a  vast  and  complex  mechanism, 
and  that,  not  only  for  the  marvellous  adjustment 
of  its  parts,  but  above  all,  for  the  still  more 
marvellous  adjustment  of  its  laws,  it  requires 
an  Intelligent  Adjuster. 

Ad'ustment  '^^^  need  is  one  which  we  may  see 

and  Pre-      more   clearly  when  we  reflect   on   the 

conception    connection    that    exists    between    con- 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  37 

struction  and  preconception.  For  things  have  to 
exist  mentally  before  they  exist  really,  whenever 
they  have  to  be  put  into  any  kind  of  order. 

Let  us  suppose  that  we  have  before  us  a 
mechanism  of  a  given  number  of  pieces.  It  is 
clear  that  we  have  not  merely  these  pieces,  but  a 
special  quality  attaching  to  each,  by  which  they 
fit  into  one  another  in  order  to  work  for  a  definite 
object.  It  is  equally  clear  that  the  pieces  have 
received  this  quality,  their  special  make  and  shape, 
in  view  of  the  object  to  be  attained.  That  implies 
that  they  must  have  been  seen  and  adjusted 
before  they  were  actually  made,  else  there  is  no 
guiding  principle  on  which  the  adjustment  could 
have  been  directed.  The  only  medium  in  which 
things  can  be  seen  or  shaped  before  they  come 
into  real  existence,  is  an  intelligent  mind.  It 
alone  can  foresee  the  object  and  mentally  picture 
the  pieces  and  their  adjustment,  and  thus  give  to 
them  the  shape  which  is  required  for  the  purpose 
in  view. 

If  it  were  otherwise,  we  should  have  to 
suppose  that  the  pieces  shaped  themselves  by 
some  blind  and  unconscious  tendency  inherent  in 
themselves  ;  and  what  is  stranger  still,  that  while 
the  tendency  was  thus  blind  and  unconscious,  and 
able  neither  to  see  nor  know  what  it  was  aiming 
at,  it  achieved  its  purpose  with  unerring  precision 


38  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

and  unrivalled  success.     Such  a  reason  would  be 

worse  than  none.     We  feel    that    such    a    belief 

would  be  degrading,  for  it  attributes  all  that  is 

highest  and  best  in  the  universe  to  a  cause  which 

is  blind  and  ignorant.^     It  would  be  futile  to  veil 

the  real  meaning  of  the  belief  by  using  such  terms 

as  *' Nature"  or  '*  Laws  of  Nature,"  as  if  these 

were  personifications.     Nature  in  so  far  as  it  acts, 

means  certain  forces,   and  laws  of  nature  mean 

nothing  more  than  the  uniform  mode  in  which  the 

forces  act.     While  these  forces  are  non-intelligent 

they  can  neither  see,  nor  know,  nor  understand, 

and  therefore  no  amount  of  rhetoric  would  ever 

conceal  the  poverty  and  hopeless  inadequacy  of 

the  position  by  which  a  blind  and  ignorant  force 

is  made  to  stand  as  the  reason  of  the  construction 

of  plants  and  of  planets,  and  of  achievements  in 

ingenuity     and    contriving     skill     immeasurably 

transcending   all  the  wisdom  and  most    brilliant 

genius  of  mankind.     To  say  that  a  magnificent 

mechanism  like  the  universe  had  no  other  author 

than  an  unconscious    force,   is   not    to  give  to  a 

reason,    but  rather  in  despite  of  all  reason,   to 

impute  wonders  of  foresight  to  that  which  sees 

^  To  say  that  intelligence  was  latent  in  the  original 
forces,  and  afterwards  developed,  would  not  in  the  least  help 
in  the  solution.  For  it  was  not  the  developed  intelligence 
as  we  see  it  in  man  that  shaped  the  universe,  and  the  intelli- 
gence in  its  latent  forces  could  not  see  or  understand. 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD  39 

not,  and  wonders  of  contrivance  to  that  which 
knows  not.  To  accept  such  a  contradiction 
requires  more  credulity  than  most  men  are  found 
to  possess.  As  an  explanation  of  the  universe,  it 
not  only  fails  to  explain,  but  gives  us  instead  a 
genesis  of  the  greater  out  of  the  less,  and  of  things 
out  of  their  contradictories,  which  is  in  itself 
something  far  more  difficult  than  the  original 
problem.  As  a  creed,  it  seems  to  be  in  reality 
something  harder  to  believe  than  any  of  the 
dogmas  of  revealed  religion. 

As  we  cannot  accept  this  blindfolded  know- 
nothing  wonder-worker  called  Force  as  the 
contriver  of  the  glorious  mechanism  of  the 
universe,  we  conclude  that  just  because  it  is  a 
mechanism  it  must  have  had  an  intelligent 
Maker.  For  construction  and  adjustment  of 
parts  by  their  nature  imply  preconception  in 
a  thinking  mind,  and  preconception  implies 
intelligence. 

To  construct  something  is  something  more 
than  to  know  something.  If  it  is  certain  that 
it  requires  intelligence,  and  a  high  degree  of  it,  to 
know  the  solar  system,  or  the  organism  of  a  plant 
or  an  insect,  much  more  must  intelligence  have 
been  needed  to  produce  it  and  to  give  know- 
ledge so  much  to  work  upon.  What  mind 
alone      can      study,      mind      alone     can      have 


40  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

constructed  to  be  studied.  Men  of  science, 
astronomers  and  physicists,  by  the  very  measure 
of  their  genius,  which  we  gratefully  admire,  are 
themselves  the  best  refutation  of  the  conclusions 
of  some  amongst  their  number,  who  ascribe  the 
existence  of  the  world  to  a  cause  immeasurably 
less  intelligent  than  themselves.  Hence  we  have 
to  choose  between  belief  in  an  Intelligent  Creator 
— the  most  simple  and  rational  solution,  and  the 
one  most  in  harmony  with  the  workings  of  our 
own  intelligent  nature — or  to  descend  to  the 
bathos  of  putting  at  the  origin  and  in  supreme 
control  of  all  things  a  force  which  can  neither  see, 
nor  hear,  or  understand — an  alternative  which,  as 
we  have  said,  seems  to  us  the  apotheosis  of 
blindness  and  ignorance./  That  which  is  at  the 
beginning  of  all  things,  and  which  contains  the 
reason  of  all  things,  is  God,  by  whatever  name  we 
may  choose  to  call  it.  If  we  are  to  have  a  God 
— and  by  the  force  of  the  definition  we  must  have 
one — it  is  neither  good  nor  reasonable,  nor  in 
keeping  with  our  nature  or  with  His  handiwork, 
that  we  should  have  a  blind  one. 


VL — Argument  from  Law  or  Conscience. 

The  argument  which  is  sought  in  the  nature 
of  Law,  in  the  deeper  sense  of  the  word,  may  be 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  41 

stated  as  follows.  Our  reason  tells  us  that  certain 
things  are  true  or  false.  Our  conscience — which 
is  our  reason  in  a  certain  aspect — tells  us  that 
certain  things  are  right  or  wrong.  Moreover  we 
feel  that  this  distinction  is  not  arbitrary  or 
conventional,  but  is  rooted  in  the  nature  of  things, 
and  is  therefore  a  law  in  the  fundamental  sense  of 
the  term.  We  know,  for  instance,  not  only  that 
it  is  true  that  two  and  two  make  four,  but  that  it 
is  true  in  all  times,  in  all  conditions,  and  in  all 
places,  just  as  the  statement  that  two  and  two 
make  five  would  be  false  in  the  same  manner. 
There  is  thus  a  law  of  truth  as  against  falsehood, 
which  is  universal  and  everlasting.  It  is  likewise 
immutable,  and  absolutely  independent  of  man  s 
consent.  If  all  the  nations  of  the  world  agreed 
to-morrow  in  a  resolution  by  unanimous  consent 
that  in  future  two  and  two  should  make  five,  or 
anything  else  than  four,  we  know  that  two  and 
two  would  continue  to  make  four  just  as  it  did 
from  all  time,  and  as  it  will  do  for  all  eternity. 
In  like  manner,  there  is  a  law  of  right  as  against 
wrong,  which  in  its  ultimate  principle  is  immutable, 
eternal,  and  independent  of  human  consent.  An 
ethical  flaw,  like  a  mathematical  one,  is  a  violation 
of  a  principle  which  is  in  the  nature  of  things  above 
and  beyond  all  human  control  or  adaptation.  If, 
then,  there  is  thus  written  in  our  rational  nature 


42  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

y    a  law  of  Truth   and    Falsehood,   and   a    law  of 

Right  and  Wrong — laws  which   are   not  of  our 

The  Law    ^^^^ing — there    must    be   a    Lawgiver 

and  the     who    made   them,    and    the    Lawgiver 

awgiver     j^^^^     j^^    |jj^g     j^jg     j^^^^    necessary, 

eternal,  and  immutable.  /For  law,  above  all  things 
— even  in  its  political  sense,  but  much  more  in 
its  natural  sense — is  the  highest  expression  of 
order  and  purpose,  and  therefore  of  intelligence. 
/  There  can  be  no  law  without  a  Lawgiver,  and 
the  Lawgiver  must  Himself  be  intelligent,  if 
His  law  appeals  to  our  intelligence. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  our  conscience  is 
the  revealer  of  God,  and  that  it  is  God's  voice 
-r^i.   T^-  .  .    within  us.     That   is  true  in  the  sense 

The  Dictate 

of         that  conscience  is  the  name  which  we 
Conscience   ^^j^g   ^^   q^j.   reason   when   applied   to 

nota         ^  r     .    1  1  ic 

Revealer     matters  of  right  and  wrong  (for  con- 
^"^a       science  is   not   a  distinct  faculty  from 

Resultant  of     i       .        n  in* 

Perception  ^^^  intellect,  and  all  its  perceptions,  in 
of  God's  so  far  as  it  perceives  at  all,  cannot  be 
xis  enc  Q^i^gj.  ^j^^j^  intellectual),  and  in  so  far 
as  it  is  the  voice  of  our  reasonable  nature  which 
God  has  given  us,  it  is  the  voice  of  God.  But 
it  is  strictly  the  revealer,  not  directly  of  God, 
but  of  the  **  ought,"  or  the  duties  which  we  owe 
to  God.  Naturally  there  would  be  no  ''ought'* 
or   duty   at   all,   unless    there   was   a    righteous- 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  43 

ness  or  God  at  the  end  of  it.  But  the  per- 
ception of  righteousness — or  of  God,  who  is 
concrete  righteousness — is  the  work  of  reason  ; 
and  when  reason  sees  it,  and,  consequently,  the 
practical  *' ought"  or  ** ought  not"  which  arises 
therefrom,  we  call  it  conscience.  God  or 
righteousness  in  some  shape  has  first  of  all  to 
be  reached  by  reason  before  reason,  which  we  call 
conscience,  can  dictate  its  practical  judgement. 
Conscience  thus  postulates  God  or  goodness 
rather  than  reveals  them.  Hence  the  revealer  of 
God  in  the  natural  order  is  the  light  of  reason,  as 
the  Vatican  Council  most  opportunely  declared. 
Reason  may  apprehend  the  existence  of  God  in 
two  ways — either  by  looking  back  to  Him  as  the 
First  Cause,  or  looking  forward  to  Him  as  the 
Last  End.  The  one  tells  us  that  we  were  made 
by  Him,  the  other  tells  that  us  we  were  made 
for  Him.  It  is  out  of  this  second  or  final  percep- 
tion— viz.,  that  we  are  made  for  goodness,  or  for 
God  as  our  End — that  comes  the  judgement  of 
reason  of  what  is  or  is  not  in  harmony  with  our 
reaching  it — God's  pleasure  or  displeasure  as  we 
call  it — and  the  sense  of  sin  or  justice  with  the 
practical  ''ought"  or  dictate  which  we  name 
conscience. 

The  distinction  has  its  importance  in  the  fact 
that  the  practical  judgement  of  conscience  takes 


44  THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD 

its  direction  from  a  speculative  judgement  of  reason 
which  precedes  it.  And  because  reason,  while 
infallible  in  its  first  principles,  is  not  so  in  its 
deductions,  we  have  the  case  of  what  is  known 
as  false  conscience.  A  man  may  be  heard  to 
say  that  he  cannot  conscientiously  believe  in 
transubstantiation.  But  it  is  not  in  the  least 
his  conscience  which  judges  of  the  doctrine.  His 
conscience  cannot  tell  him  whether  transub- 
stantiation is  true,  any  more  than  it  can  tell  him 
whether  Free  Trade  or  Protection  is  the  better 
policy.  He  exercises  on  that  matter  his  individual 
reason — his  private  judgement — to  see  whether  it 
is  true  or  not,  and  his  reason  in  formulating 
conclusions  has  to  depend  on  the  apprehension 
of  facts,  which  may  or  may  not  be  adequate,  and 
as  a  result  he  may  or  may  not  arrive  at  an 
accurate  decision.  Having  arrived  at  the  con- 
clusion that  transubstantiation  is  not  true,  his 
conscience  proceeds  to  make  its  practical  dictate, 
namely,  that  he  ought  not  to  believe  or  profess  a 
doctrine  which  he  judges  to  be  untrue.  This 
latter  part  is  alone  the  voice  of  conscience,  and 
that  voice  remains  always  true  and  must  always 
be  followed.  But  the  conclusion  to  which  he 
applies  it,  namely,  that  the  doctrine  of  tran- 
substantiation is  untrue,  is  not  at  all  the  voice 
of    conscience,     but    that    of    his    own     fallible 


THE    EXISTENCE    OF   GOD  45 

private  judgement.  The  sense  of  right  and 
wrong — of  the  duty  of  doing  what  God  wills, 
or  what  is  Godward  or  right,  and  of  avoiding 
what  God  forbids,  or  what  is  ungodward  or 
wrong,  is  not  so  much  the  cause  as  the  resultant, 
and  not  so  much  the  premiss  as  the  conclusion  of 
the  reason  perceiving  that  God  is,  and  that  certain 
actions  make  for  or  make  against  Him.  The 
light  of  reason,  in  its  true  domain  and  in  its 
primary  principles,  whether  turned  backward  to 
God  as  our  First  Beginning  in  the  revelation  of 
our  origin,  or  forward  to  God  as  our  Last  End 
in  the  revelation  of  our  duty,  remains  the  true 
Schekinah  of  the  presence  of  God — the  Alpha 
and  Omega  within  us. 

VII, — Ontological  Argument, 

The  ontological  proofs  for  the  existence  of 
God  are  generally  felt  to  be  somewhat  abstruse 
and  profound,  but  by  the  minds  to  which  they 
appeal — Hegel's  amongst  others — they  have  been 
found  in  the  long-run  to  be  the  most  convincing 
and  the  most  satisfactory.  The  one  which  I 
indicate  here  is  not  the  well-known  argument  of 
St  Anselm,  but  rather  a  line  of  thought  which 
may  serve  at  least  to  make  more  clear  the  unity 
and   necessity    of  transcendental   being,    and    of 


46  THE    EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

the  logical  connection   which  exists  between  the 
concept  of  being  and  the  attributes  of  God. 

We  have  already  seen  in  dealing  with  the 
proof  which  is  drawn  from  perfection,  that  our 
reason  recognises  a  clear  distinction  between  neces- 
sary and  contingent  truths — for  instance,  between 
such  a  truth  as  two  and  two  makinof  four,  and 
the  truth  that  William  of  Normandy  invaded 
this  country.  The  one  is  and  must  be,  and  could 
not  be  otherwise.  The  other  is  and  may  be,  but 
might  have  been  otherwise./  With  this 
The  Idea  distinction  before  us,  we  turn  our  minds 

01  seing^ 

to  what  we  feel  to  be  the  most  funda- 
mental of  all  concepts — that  of  being.  Because 
it  is  the  bed-rock  of  thought,  we  cannot  define 
it,  and  can  only  explain  it  by  saying  that  Being 
is  that  which  is.  Its  opposite  is  the  Nothing  or 
nihihim,  that  which  is  not.^ 

If  we  reflect  upon  the  meaning  of  these  two 
terms,  we  shall  feel  that  the  Nothing  or  the 
nihilum  could  not  exist.  It  would  contradict 
itself  if  it  did.  A  state  of  absolute  nothingness 
is  impossible.  As  it  has  been  truly  said,  if 
nothingness  had  existed  even  for  an  instant, 
nothing  could  ever  have  existed  afterwards.  If, 
then,  the  nothing  never  could  have  existed,  there 
must  be  something  which  always  existed.  And  this 
something,  whatever  it  may  be,  must  always  have 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  47 

been,  or  else  the  nothing  would  have  been,  which 
is  impossible.  Hence  there  is  a  sense  in  which 
being  is  necessary ;  for  to  say  that  something 
must  be,  or  cannot  but  have  been,  is  to  say  in 
other  words  that  it  is  a  necessary  being. 

Here  we  have  to  guard  against  any  mere 
play  upon  words.  It  might  be  said  that  what 
we  have  found  by  our  reflection  is  the  truth,  that 
something  or  other  must  always  have  been,  but 
not  that  the  being  itself  is  a  'necessary  one ;  or, 
to  put  it  otherwise,  it  is  the  truth  that  is  neces- 
sary, not  the  being. 

But  if  we  reflect  still  further  we  shall  find 
that  after  all  the  one  implies  the  other. 

For  we  know  that  since  nothingness  never 
could  have  been,  something  (we  do  not  say  what) 
always  must  have  been  in  existence.  If  that 
something  had  the  reason  of  its  existence  in 
itself — in  other  words,  if  it  were  self-existent — it 
would  certainly  be  a  necessary  being,  for  by  its  very 
condition,  its  essence  and  existence  would  be  the 
same,  and  it  could  not  help  existing.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  the  something  which  always  existed  had 
not  the  reason  of  its  existence  in  itself,  it  must  have 
had  it  in  something  else  which  had.  Then  this 
something  else  would  be  the  self-existent  and 
necessary  being.  Thus  in  any  case,  if  the 
nothingness  be  excluded,  as  it  must  be,  we  can- 


48  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

not   escape   from    the  admission  of  a  necessary 
being. 

Here   it   might   be   said    that  the   necessary 
being  which  we  have  found  is  nothing 

Analysis  of  i  i     •  •  11 

Attributes    ^^^^  ^han  bemg  m  general,  or  let  us 
say,  to  put  it  concretely,  the  Universe. 
Whether  that  is  so  or  not,  we  may  try  to  find 
out  by  an  analysis. 

Let  us  call  the  being  which  we  have  been 
considering  X.  It  includes  simply  that  being 
which  is  necessitated  by  the  inevitable  exclusion 
of  the  nothingness. 

1.  We  have  seen  that  X  must  be,  or  the 
nothingness  would  be,  and  therefore  X  is  a 
necessary  being. 

2.  But  as  the  nothingness  not  only  cannot  be, 
but  never  could  have  been,  and  never  can  be, 
it  is  clear  that  X  not  only  must  be,  but  must 
always  have  been,  and  must  always  be.  X 
therefore  is  a  being  which  has  no  beginning,  and 
no  end — which  ever  was,  is,  and  ever  shall  be. 
In  other  words,  it  is  eternal. 

3.  As  the  very  meaning  of  X  is  that  it  is 
being  which  is  logically  forced  upon  us  by  the 
fact  that  nothingness  could  not  exist,  and  as  it 
is  thus  logically  born  by  the  exclusion  of  nothing- 
ness, it  follows  that  it  must  contain  all  that  is 
outside  of  nothingness,  and  that  nothingness  is 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  49 

the  only  limit  of  its  being.  That  is  only  to  say 
that  it  contains  the  fulness  of  being,  that  its 
being  is  limitless,  or  Infinite.  Since  outside  of  it 
nothing  can  ever  be,  it  contains  the  **all  that  is 
or  ever  can  be,"  which  is  exactly  the  definition  of 
the  Infinite  being. 

4.  As  X  is  infinite,  it  is  evidently  one.  By 
its  very  meaning,  outside  of  it  is  nothingness,  and 
therefore  no  other  necessary  being  but  it  can 
exist.  It  has  that  outside  oneness  which  means 
no  other  than  one,  or  extrinsic  unity. 

5.  As  X  is  infinite,  it  is  also  simple  or  devoid 
of  parts  ;  that  is,  it  has  also  inside  oneness,  or 
intrinsic  unity.  If  X  were  composite,  and  so  had 
parts,  the  parts  would  by  the  very  fact  have  a 
number,  and  that  number,  at  least  in  thought, 
could  be  added  to.  A  greater  than  X  could 
therefore  be  conceived  and  therefore  possible,  and 
X  would  not  be  infinite,  and  it  would  not  be,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  being  **  outside  of  which 
nothing  can  be."  X  is,  therefore,  simple  by  the 
fact  of  being  infinite. 

6.  We  have  already  seen  that  X  is  eternal ; 
that  as  a  being  which  must  be,  it  must  always 
have  been,  is,  and  must  always  be.  Its  duration 
is  Infinite  or  eternal.  There  is  no  conceivable 
instant  in  which  it  was  not  (or  in  that  time  the 
nothingness  would  have  been).       But  infinite  or 

D 


so  THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD 

eternal  duration  has  no  parts.  If  it  had  any- 
such  parts,  their  number  could  be  added  to,  and 
it  could  be  conceived  as  greater  than  it  is. 
Hence  X's  existence  is  not  one  of  successive 
time,  but  of  eternity.  As  a  necessary  and 
eternal  being  it  has  not  to  wait  until  to-morrow 
for  a  part  of  its  existence.  Its  being  is  the  eternal 
now,  without  instants  of  succession  in  the  past 
or  future.  Hence  X  is  immutable,  for  change 
implies  time,  or  succession  of  states  or  instants, 
since  not  even  a  Necessary  and  Infinite  being 
can  be  and  not  be  something  at  the  same 
time. 

Thus,  from  the  concept  of  being,  and  by 
the  contrast  and  inevitable  exclusion  of  nothing- 
ness or  the  nihilum,  there  seems  to  be  reasonably 
evolved  before  our  minds  a  Being  which  is 
necessary,  or  self-existent.  Eternal,  Infinite, 
One  Simple  and  Immutable.  That  Being 
certainly  cannot  be  the  universe  around  us,  which 
has  time,  and  change,  and  composition,  and 
finiteness  written  so  plainly  all  over  its  constitution. 
It  is  all  that  the  universe  is  not,  and  the  universe 
is  all  that  it  is  not.  And  we  may  note  that  if 
anything  were  wanted  to  emphasise  the  abyssmal 
difference  between  them,  and  to  prove  that  the 
universe  cannot  be  the  self-existent  being 
which   our    reason  demands,    it  would  surely  be 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  51 

the  doctrine  of  evolution.  By  its  very  concept, 
evolution  postulates  and  insists  upon  limitation, 
number,  succession,  change ;  all  of  which  are 
loud-voiced  in  declaring  that  the  universe  which 
they  stamp  cannot  be  the  one  which  is  Infinite, 
One  Simple,  Immutable,  and  Eternal,  as  the 
Being  which  is  necessary  must  be. 

It  may  be  urged  that  in  following  this  line  of 
thought  we  merely  allow  ourselves  to  become  the 
sport  of  our  own  dialectics,  and  that  at  the  outset 
we  have  begged  our  conclusions  in  the  formula- 
tion of  our  definitions,  and  that  when  we  started 
with  a  being,  which  is  logically  alone  with  the 
nihilum,  we  practically  secured  all  that  we  wanted, 
and  the  rest  of  the  process  has  been  mere  thought- 
spinning  and  word-juggling,  without  adding  any 
fresh  truth  to  our  original  postulate. 

But  after  all,  we  may  feel  it  is  not  a  very  great 
logical  sin  to  have  at  the  end  of  our  reasoning 
nothing  in  our  conclusions  which  was  not  con- 
tained in,  and  did  not  come  out  of,  our  original 
premisses.  Were  it  otherwise,  we  might  have 
some  cause  for  misgiving.  And  as  to  the  pre- 
misses, or  definitions  of  being  and  nothingness,  if 
they  can  be  called  definitions,  it  would  be  futile  to 
imagine  that  they  can  be  treated  as  arbitrary 
assumptions,  since  they  are  concepts  which  lie  at 
the  root  of  all  reality,  and  appeal  as  such  to  the 


S2  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

common  sense  of  mankind.  They  are  not  cer- 
tainly of  our  making,  but  are  founded  in  the 
nature  of  things. 

A  more  serious  objection,  albeit  one  which  is 
never  likely  to  have  much  grip  on  men  of  vigor- 
ous common  sense,  is  that  all  such  reasoning 
may  hold  good  in  the  realm  of  mind,  but  there  is 
no  bridge  between  the  ideal  and  the  real,  and 
therefore  no  means  of  being  certain  that  any 
reality  corresponds  to  our  reasoning. 

The  plain  answer  to  this  contention,  and  to 

the  systems  of  philosophy  which  lie  behind  it,  must 

ever  be  that  if  knowledge  is  to  be  knowledge  at  all 

it  must  be  knowledge  by  means  of  our  minds,  and 

that  the  first  postulate  of  all  knowledge 

^  ^         must  be  that  our  minds  are  valid  and 

necessary 

Postulate  of  veracious  instruments  for  reaching  the 

all  Know-    realities  that  lie  outside  of  us.     If  they 
ledge 

are  not,  we  close  the  only  door  to  know- 
ledge of  any  kind,  for  we  have  no  other  instru- 
ments with  which  we  can  work,  and  if  they  are 
unreliable,  their  report  as  to  our  thoughts,  quite 
as  much  as  to  things  outside  of  us,  would  not 
be  worth  consideration.  No  man  can  jump  out 
of  his  subjectivity  in  order  to  verify  his  im- 
pressions as  to  exterior  realities,  nor  would  it 
in  the  least  serve  his  purpose  even  if  he  could, 
seeing  that  he  would  have  left  behind  him  his 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD  53 

mental  apparatus,  by  which  alone  he  could  carry 
out  the  verification.  Any  system  of  episte- 
mology  which  enters  on  a  critique  not  merely  of 
the  mental  process,  but  of  the  mental  instrument 
itself,  must  be  self-refuted,  since  it  uses  the  very 
instrument  which  it  criticises  in  order  to  make  the 
criticism,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  the  criticism 
can  ever  be  more  trustworthy  than  the  instrument 
which  the  critic  has  used  to  make  it. 

But  in  truth,  as  our  minds  are  the  only  instru- 
ments by  which  we  can  know  realities,  whether 
inside  or  outside  of  us,  we  must  be  content  to 
postulate  their  validity,  or  to  know  nothing,  and 
condemn  ourselves  to  a  state  of  scepticism  and 
ignorance.  Men  of  common  sense  refuse  to  blow 
out  the  light  and  sit  in  the  dark  just  because  there 
is  no  absolute  proof  of  the  veracity  of  their  eye- 
sight. 

To  those  that  have  once  reached  the  truth  of 
the  Necessary  Being,  there  is  no  need  to  say  that 
in   It  they  have  found  the  bridre  be-    ^, 

1     .         .  .  .  The  bridge 

tween  their  minds  and  exterior  realities,  between  the 
Our  minds  are  by  their  very  nature  Zealand 
active  images  of  the  Divine  mind. 
That  is  why  they  are  intelligent.  Things  outside 
of  us  are  also  by  their  very  nature  passive  images 
of  the  Divine  Reality.  That  is  why  they  are 
intelligible.     The  minds  that  think  and  the  things 


54  THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD 

that  are  thought  about  are  both  analogues  of  the 
Divine  Absolute,  and  things  which  are  analogical 
to  the  same  thing  are  analogical  to  one  another. 
Thus  between  minds  and  objects  there  is  an 
analogical  bond  which  is  necessary  and  onto- 
logical,  and  as  such  sure  and  veracious,  and  this 
is  the  bridge  which  He  who  is  at  once  the  Divine 
Ideality  and  Reality  has  built  between  the  two. 

It  is  precisely  this  bond  or  bridge  which  in  a 
special  way  enforces  the  argument  of  Design. 
There  is  no  mechanism — not  even  that  of  the 
solar  system — which  can  be  compared  to  that  of 
the  human  mind  as  an  instrument  of  thought. 
In  an  ordinary  machine  we  admire  the  adjustment 
of  part  to  part.  Higher  still  is  that  marvellous 
adaptation  in  nature  by  which  law  is  adjusted  to 
law.  But  highest  of  all  and  most  marvellous  of 
all  in  the  mechanism  of  the  Universe  is  that 
ineffable  adaptation  which  has  been  wrought 
between  the  minds  that  are  ever  thinking  and 
their  objects  that  are  ever  thought  upon  — 
between  the  mentalities  and  the  realities — between 
the  intelligences  and  the  intelligibilities — between 
thoughts  and  things — so  that  as  often  as  we 
observe,  things  are  projected  into  thought,  and  as 
often  as  we  construct,  thoughts  are  projected  into 
things,  and  the  two  worlds  of  mind  and  matter  are 
fprever  clasped  and  interwoven  in  the  union  of  the 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  55 

Knowing  and  the  Known.  It  is  this  adjustment 
of  thoughts  and  things  which  is  the  dtsign  par 
excellence^  and  more  eloquently  than  all  others 
it  demands  the  need  of  an  Adjuster,  and  one  who 
in  Himself  is  Mind  and  Reality,  and  of  whom  all 
Intelligence  and  Intelligibility  wedded  here  below 
are  but  the  reflect  and  the  Hkeness.  It  is  in  His 
absolute  and  transcendental  Unity,  containing 
the  reason  of  all  things — and  not  in  our  poor 
fragmentary  universe  of  things  here  below — that 
we  find  the  term  of  the  true  Monism  with  which 
our  unity-loving  souls  crave  to  finish  up  the  syn- 
thesis of  all  that  we  are  and  all  that  we  know. 
He  is  the  Eternal  Monos.  **/  am  the  First,  and 
I  am  the  Last,  and  besides  Me  there  is  no  God'' 
(Isaias  xliv.  6). 

VIII. — j^sthetic  Argument, 

One  of  the  most  palpable  facts  of  human 
experience  is  that  there  are  things  which  are 
beautiful,  and  that  it  gives  joy  to  behold  them. 
It  may  be  a  majestic  landscape,  or  a  master- 
piece of  painting  or  sculpture  or  of  musical 
composition,  but  we  feel  that  in  such  things 
there  is  beauty,  and  that  it  elevates  us,  and 
gladdens  us,  and  draws  our  souls  towards  it. 
Let  u$  ask  the  reason  why.     If  we  analyse  the 


56  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

idea  of  beauty,  it  is  evident  that  it  is  the  combina- 
tion of  two  things — Unity  and  Variety.  If  for 
variety,  we  were  to  say  wealth  of  being,  or  wealth 
of  formal  entity,  we  should  express  our  meaning 
more  fully  and  more  precisely.  The  most  beautiful 
being  is  that  in  which  the  greatest  variety,  viz., 
the  greatest  amount  of  being  (not  mere  quanti- 
tative but  qualitative  or  formal  being)  is  held 
together  or  co-ordinated  in  the  closest  degree  of 
unity.  Here  we  can  see  at  once  why  beautiful 
things  give  joy.  If  an  amount  of  being  were 
altogether  devoid  of  unity,  it  would  be  chaos, 
and  beyond  the  reach  of  our  minds.  It  would 
be  intangible  or  unintelligible.  It  is  just  by  the 
unity  which  is  in  a  thing  that  it  is  mentally 
get-at-able.  The  mind  itself  is  an  active  unity — 
active  with  the  highest  kind  of  activity  which  is 
life,  and  the  highest  kind  of  life,  which  is  intelli- 
gence. Intelligence  is  living  unity  with  the 
power  of  reading  unity,  and  all  things  by  their 
unity.  We  try  to  express  all  that  by  the  single 
word  spirit.  Because  it  is  living  unity  it  has  a 
mysterious  way  of  getting  into  things  by  means 
of  their  unity,  and  by  a  vital  act  seeing  them  in 
itself,  and  that  is  the  process  which  we  call 
knowing  or  understanding.  It  follows  that  the 
more  unity  there  is  in  a  thing,  the  more  clearly 
and  readily  the  mind  understands   it.     It  is  by 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD  57 

unifications,  or  general  ideas — grasps  of  unity — 
that  we  gain  our  knowledge,  sometimes  chaining 
the  unities  as    when    we  syllogise,    or   at  other 
times  simply  contemplating  their  oneness  by  an 
act  of  intuition.     In  like  manner,  when  an  object 
which  is  beautiful  comes  before  us,  we  apprehend 
it  and  get  it  into  our  souls  by  means  of  its  unity, 
and  the  greater  the   measure   of  its   unity,    the 
clearer  will  be  the  apprehension.       The  greater 
the  variety  or  wealth  of  being  which  is  brought 
under   the   unity,    the   greater  will  be  the  soul- 
grasp,    and   consequently  the  greater  the  joy  of 
the  soul.     For  the  two    things   which   the  soul 
loves  and  feeds  upon  are  Unity  and  Being — or 
I  ought   rather   to   say.    Being  through   Unity. 
It  itself  is  Spirit  or  Unity-Being,  and  it  delights 
in  finding  that  which    is    the  likeness  of  itself. 
It  is,  so  to  speak,  a  glimpse  of  its  own  beauty. 
The  more  intense  the  unity,  and  the  more  there 
is  of  variety,  or  muchness  of  being,  the  greater 
its  delight  becomes.      Hence   beauty   gives  joy 
owing    to   its   very   kinship   to    the   soul.     The 
unity,  or  self-compatibility  which  is  inherent  in 
things    by   which   we   understand    them,    or    by 
which    they   are   thinkable,    is    their    **  thinkable 
quality,"  or  species  intelligibilisy  and  it  is    by  it 
that  we  grasp  or  enter  into  them  and  feel  all  the 
joy  of  the  beautiful  and  the  true, 


58  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

There  is  thus  a  very  close  connection  between 
intelligence  and  the  appreciation  of  the  beautiful 
If  I  place  a  beautiful  masterpiece  of  some  great 
painter  before  a  dog,  little  notice  will  paid  to  it. 
If  I  place  it  before  a  savage,  endowed  with  an 
intelligence,  lacking  in  cultivation  perhaps,  but 
therefore  radically  differing  from  the  brute,  the 
painting  may  be  admired,  but  possibly  not  so 
much  as  the  gilt  frame.  The  aesthetic  power  to 
admire  is  there,  but  it  may  not  be  evoked  by  the 
painting  in  question.  If  I  put  it  before  a  person 
who  is  not  indeed  a  savage,  but  is  ignorant  or 
uncultivated,  he  may  find  pleasure  in  the  work  of 
art,  but  possibly  not  so  much  as  in  some  brightly 
coloured  print  which  would  appeal  more  to 
unformed  taste.  If  I  put  it  before  some  one  of 
high  intelligence  and  artistic  culture,  the  beauty 
of  the  painting  will  be  felt  and  appreciated. 
Thus  the  conception  of  beauty,  once  found  in 
human  intelligence,  is  seen  to  transcend  the 
sensible  apprehension  of  the  mere  brute,  and  at 
the  same  time  to  be  more  recognised  and  relished 
the  higher  we  ascend  in  the  scale  of  cultured  and 
refined  mind.  If  upon  a  desert  island  I  pick  up 
a  scrap  of  paper  upon  which  a  few  words  are 
written,  I  know  that  some  intelligent  being  must 
have  been  the  writer.  Why  ?  Because,  if  it  is 
only  by  intelligence  that  I   can  read  the  words, 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD  59 

much  more  must  it  be  only  by  intelligence  that 
the  words  can  have  been  written  for  me  to  read 
them.  The  writing,  in  fact,  is  the  appeal  which 
one  intelligence  makes  to  another.  If,  then, 
beauty  is  stamped  so  clearly,  so  widely,  so 
magnificently  upon  the  universe,  and  if  it  speaks 
so  intensely  to  the  depths  of  the  human  soul,  it 
is  evident  that  even  as  intelligence  is  needed  to 
appreciate  it,  so  intelligence  must  have  been 
needed  to  put  it  there  to  be  appreciated.  In  other 
words,  if  beauty  be  a  handwriting  upon  the  open 
page  of  the  universe,  which  only  intelligence  can 
read,  it  must  also  be  one  which  only  intelligence 
can  have  written.  All  beauty  is  the  appeal  to 
our  intelligence  from  the  Supreme  Intelligence 
— the  Infinite  whose  oneness  is  the  source  of  all 
unity,  whether  thinking  or  thinkable,  and  whose 
fulness  of  being  is  the  source  of  all  wealth  of 
variety.  It  is  the  shadow  of  the  Infinite  beauty 
cast  upon  creation,  and  the  only  reason  why 
one  thing  is  more  beautiful  than  another  is 
because  it  has  more  of  the  joy-giving  likeness  of 
God. 

In  the  foregoing  arguments  I  have  attempted 
to  sketch,  at  least  in  bald  outline,  some  of  the 
reasons  which  help  to  convince  us  of  the  existence 
of  God.  But  happily,  God,  like  light,  is  His 
own   revealer,   and    He,    both    by   the   light   of 


6o  THE   EXISTENCE   OF   GOD 

reason  and  the  light  of  His  own  life,  which  we 

call  grace,  writes  His  witness  vitally  in  the  soul 

of  man.     That  testimony,  just  because 

Spiritual      j^    jg    yji-^j    IS  more  than  can    be  put 

Experience     ,  ^  ^ 

into  words,  or  formulated  in  the  set 
terms  of  an  argument.  Also,  because  it  is 
vital,  and  supernaturally  vital,  it  will  require 
not  mere  intellectual  capacity,  but  qualities  of 
heart  which  are  in  harmony  with  God,  to  receive 
it.  No  doubt,  men  will  always  feel  about  their 
Maker  more  than  they  can  easily  utter,  but  as 
in  the  case  of  the  crystal  and  the  sunlight,  it  is 
inevitable  that  how  much  or  how  little  they  may 
feel  will  depend  upon  the  state  of  the  soul,  and 
its  spiritual  eyesight  or  power  to  assimilate 
the  light  will  be  in  the  measure  of  its  moral 
nearness  to  the  light  and  to  the  Light-giver. 

In  the  trend  of  modern  thought  much  value 
is  rightly  attached  to  the  evidential  value  of 
experience.  It  is  upon  experience  that  modern 
science  takes  its  stand,  and  carries  from  triumph 
to  triumph  the  magnificent  work  which  it 
accomplishes  for  the  well-being  of  mankind. 
But  physical  experience  is  naturally  limited  to 
physical  phenomena,  and  modern  science  does 
its  work  wearing  spectacles,  which  by  their  very 
nature  cannot  carry  beyond  secondary  causes. 
To   all   the   experience   of  sense-perception,   the 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  6i 

First  Cause  must  remain  invisible  and  inaccessible. 
God  cannot  be  caught  in  the  tests  of  the 
laboratory  any  more  than  He  can  be  formulated 
on  the  blackboard.  And  that  not  because  He 
is  not,  but  precisely  because  He  is,  and  is  what 
He  is  and  must  be.  A  God  that  could  be  so 
detected  by  sense,  or  compressed  into  a  finite 
formula,  would  be  within  measurable  distance  of 
us,  and  upon  the  upper  end  of  the  same  intellectual 
plane  as  ourselves — He  would  certainly  not  be  the 
First  Cause,  would  not  be  the  Necessary  Being, 
would  not  be  transcendental — all  of  which  are 
but  so  many  ways  of  saying  that  He  would  not 
be  God  at  all.  When,  therefore,  certain  men  of 
science  tell  us  that  in  all  their  chemical  or 
biological  researches  they  have  failed  to  find 
the  faintest  trace  of  a  Supreme  Being,  we  can 
only  say  that  no  one  in  possession  of  their  senses 
ever  imagined  that  they  would  or  could,  and  that 
their  testimony  can  only  be  welcome  to  us  as 
their  contribution,  helping  us  in  their  way,  to 
prove  the  transcendentalism,  or  what  Scripture 
calls  the  invisibility  of  the  King  of  the  Ages 
— a  quality  which  we  feel  to  be  one  of  the  most 
necessary  in  the  elements  which  enter  into  the 
concept  of  God. 

Life,  however,  is  broader  than  the  laboratory 
or  the  blackboard,  and  it  would  be  surely  a  poor 


62  THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD 

and  narrow  view  of  experience  to  limit  it  to  one 
or  the  other.  We  have  all  in  our  own  hearts  a 
higher  and  wider  theatre  of  experience.  We 
have  there,  written  in  the  life-record,  all  that 
we  have  felt  of  God  working  within  us,  of  all 
God's  dealing  with  us,  of  all  that  God  has  done 
for  us  in  the  great  crises  of  our  life,  in  hours  of 
trial,  temptation,  sorrow,  or  of  happiness,  in  the 
shade  and  shine  of  the  years  through  which  we 
have  passed.  We  feel,  more  profoundly  than  words 
could  utter,  all  that  He  has  been  to  us,  and  all  that 
we  have  been  to  Him.  If  experience  be  the  best 
foundation  of  our  knowledge,  such  life-experience 
written  in  the  depths  of  our  souls  is  to  us  the 
highest  form  of  experience,  and  certainly  one 
more  telling,  more  intimate,  and  more  secure 
than  any  which  is  likely  to  be  found  within  the 
walls  of  the  laboratory.  If  it  were  but  the 
experience  of  a  single  soul,  its  evidence  to  that 
soul  would  be  all-sufficient.  But  what  we  feel 
is  felt  not  less  intensely  by  millions  of  human 
hearts  around  us  ;  has  been  felt  by  millions  from 
generation  to  generation  in  the  inner — and  what, 
after  all,  is  the  more  real — history  of  mankind. 
With  this  volume  of  testimony,  soul-deep  and 
world-wide,  within  us  and  around  us,  we  can 
rest  secure  in  the  consciousness  of  our  God,  and 
read  in  Him  the  glad  meaning  of  our  lives  here. 


THE   EXISTENCE   OF  GOD  63 

and  the  glorious  meaning  of  our  lives  hereafter, 
when  the  eyes,  from  which  have  been  wiped  away 
all  earthly  tears,  shall  ''see  the  good  things  of  the 
Lord  in  the  land  of  the  living''  (Ps.  xxvi*  13). 


APPENDIX 


WORKS  ON  THEISM  THAT  MAY  BE  CONSULTED 

St  Thomas  Aquinas. — Siimma  Theologies* 

Summa  Contra  Gentiles, 
Bernard  Boedder. — Theologia  Rationalts, 
Stonyhurst  Manuals. — Natural  Theology, 

First  Principles, 
L.  von  Hammerstein. — Foundations  of  Faith, 
R.  Clarke. — Dialogue  on  the  Existence  of  God, 
S.  Reinstadler. — Elementa  Philosophice  Scholasticce. 
Benedict  Lorenzelli. — Philosophice  Theoreticce  Institutiones, 
Cardinal  Manning. — Religio  Viatoris, 
Professor  Flint. — Theism;  Anti-Theistic  Theories, 
Professor  Caldecott. — The  Philosophy  of  Religion, 
Rev.  C.  Harris.— Pro  Fide, 


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